Shifty or merely incompetent? Who do you trust when it comes to metadata?

Debate over Australia's data retention laws descended into farce this week, with one government minister after another stumbling over the definition of metadata and offering contradictory answers to one simple question; will the mandatory data retention scheme include spying on our web surfing habits? ASIO and the Australian Federal Police have finally set the story straight, after days of confusion and contradictions.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott initially said yes, they would track our browsing histories, but then changed his answer to no. That evening Attorney-General George Brandis stepped in to clarify the issue, initially saying no but then changing his answer to a vague yes during a train wreck interview on Sky News that was reminiscent of John Hewson's attempts to explain the GST and how it applied to buying a simple birthday cake.

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Full credit to Sky News' David Speers who didn't let Brandis brush the questions aside and forced him to clarify the metadata issue, making it clear in the process that Brandis didn't actually understand the policy he was championing. It's easy to see why civil libertarians are concerned about data retention when the politicians don't even comprehend the powers that they're granting intelligence agencies who want to spy on their own people.

Actually, watching those clips again, Hewson's GST explanation was far more coherent than Brandis' cumbersome and contradictory effort to explain metadata. Hewson's reputation was left in tatters after that interview – it possibly cost him the election – and Brandis' reputation is equally damaged in some people's eyes. Right now you wouldn't trust the Attorney-General to program your VCR let alone oversee a high-tech nation-wide surveillance program. The Sky News interview verged on satire to the point where it doesn't seem out of place when dubbed over a Clarke and Dawe skit.

There are actually two possible explanations for Brandis' appalling attempt to explain metadata on Sky News, and for Abbott's contradictory statements. One is that they didn't understand what they were talking about. The other is that they did understand what they were talking about but were deliberately trying to mislead us. So they're either incompetent or dishonest – a disturbing state of affairs similar to the internet filtering debacle on the eve of the federal election.

After the Brandis interview on Sky News I was leaning towards dishonest, because it seemed like he was tripping on his words as he played semantics to obscure the fact that the government does intend to spy on our browsing history. Then I heard Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, speaking on ABC radio on Friday morning, trying to clean up the mess that Abbott and Brandis had created. He was more articulate than Abbott or Brandis could ever hope to be on technology issues and maybe they'll think twice before freezing him out of these matters in the future.

Turnbull made it clear that the government does not intend to keep our full browsing history or even a simple list of the sites we've visited. Instead the government only wants Internet Service Providers to keep track of the IP addresses issued to their customers, because those addresses regularly change and the government wants the ability to trace suspicious activity back to specific people. In Turnbull's words;

"You're connected to your ISP to connect to the internet. It allocates you a number which is called an IP address, which is essentially your internet address for a period. That may be for a short time or a long time. And that is in the ISP's records connected to your account."

"Now, the question is: how long is that kept? Now, the reason this is important is that if at some point it is identified that an IP address which, say, belongs to Telstra has been engaged in some activity on the net, the security people want to be able to go back to Telstra and say, "IP address 1234, et cetera: who was the account that was linked to on the 4th of June, 2013? And Telstra can then say, "Okay, that was, you know, Michael Brissenden or Malcolm Turnbull... And so that, that is what's being sought."

That's pretty clear to me, although I've seen some reports misinterpreting Turnbull's comments as meaning that the government would be storing the IP addresses of every website we visit. It won't, if you believe Turnbull rather than Brandis. So I'm giving Brandis the benefit of the doubt changing my verdict on his efforts from dishonest to merely incompetent.

The politicians have made such a mess of explaining metadata this week that ASIO Director-General, David Irvine, and Australian Federal Police deputy commissioner Andrew Colvin were forced to call a press conference to clarify the issue. They sided with Turnbull, making it clear that web browsing histories will not be captured under a metadata scheme. Instead they're only asking for consistency in the way the current metadata details are stored.

The metadata scheme does not aim to "observe minutely everyone's surfing of the web or anything like that," ASIO's Irvine said.

"A URL is content and is not permissible under a metadata scheme," added the AFP's Colvin, and the metadata scheme will not allow them to access destination IP addresses without a warrant.

Irvine and Colvin were very clear on the issue, although it was a little clouded due to the fact that some journalists in the room didn't understand the difference between a home IP address and a website's IP address. The government only wants the metadata scheme to keep records of our home IP addresses, not the IP addresses of the websites we visit.

That would seem to clarify the metadata situation once and for all, but it certainly doesn't restore our faith in politicians to understand and honestly articulate their plans for this technology. Incompetent or dishonest, which is it?

82 comments so far

None of this makes sense. A URL is not content, true, but points to it. It is a human friendly handle for for an IP address eg. the URL telstra.com.au we can easily remember but the corresponding IP address 144.140.108.25 is not so easily remembered though entering either one into the search bar of your browser will take you to the same place. Brandis says that the government wants your IP address and the addresses that you visit. ASIO says it wants your IP address only. What is that going to tell them? that you were logged onto the internet at such and such a time. I think they are trying to pull the wool over our eyes, of course they want to know where we've been and who we've communicated with otherwise the whole exercise is pointless.

Commenter

mijami

Location

gelorup

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 3:40PM

AWESOME ARTICLE: Firstly to blow govt out of the water, metadata is a load of crap, the ministers don't know what it means even, it does nothing, it means a webpages data structure, see page source of any site per metadate tag. Google the word metadata, select wiki link, this will make them all look clueless. So with that dispelled what is govt intending to do? Why is it hoping the word metadata will fool everyone and thus far has done so. And they backflipped on everything I posted in the age the other day as stating they were illegal.

Commenter

Brian Woods

Location

Glenroy

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 4:49PM

all IP addresses can be cloaked for free using firefox free browser add on so a useless plan. What occurs, is joe logs in at midday and something he did was detected as sus, but Fred has joes IP addy at 1pm after joe logged off. so the time of day is critical, if Joe used firefox add-on in Australia his IP will likely be a fake china one. If not cloaked, the source of say his email shows originating IP number, a whois lookup tells the provider name, registrant and admin, police have to have warrant via evidences to request who used that IP at midday, Joe says 5 people use his computer, all deny the act, if the mail involved an overseas recipient, both sides data is protected by international law, so USA person in convo can claim a privacy breach by Aus. Hardly worth all the expense, a mere bad budget smokescreen working well

Commenter

Brian Woods

Location

Glenroy

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 4:57PM

Hillarious, metadata does not track any further than when a page was created, it dont work with email, it does on webpages created, supplied the time and date created and pc username or whatever name you choose it to say, and then becomes a permanent page tag, and after creation is not something that can track you, nor is it IP related to anything you do after creating that webpage.

Commenter

Brian Woods

Location

Glenroy

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 5:07PM

Clearly neither Brandis, Abbott or advisers like Credlin actually understand the technology. Turnbull obviously prefers to stand in the background letting them all make a fool of themselves. Of course ASIO would like to get as much as they can.

Commenter

DrPhil

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 5:52PM

@Brian Woods

Supposing I post this comment through a proxy service in China using some basic IP aliasing, I do not think ASIO would have too much trouble tracking me down (apart from the fact that I use my real name and locality). If my ISP (or ASIO sniffed data) records a connection to an IP address in China, it will also correlate with a Fairfax server log showing the same Chinese IP address.If you are trying to order raw milk online, by all means use IP aliasing, but do not rely on it to protect you - the best bet is to use free wifi somewhere and avoid being caught on security cameras.

Commenter

Gordon Rouse

Location

Yinnar

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 5:57PM

Turnbull is actually wrong in saying they don't want destination IP addresses, as far as I can make out. To quote the article::'"A URL is content and is not permissible under a metadata scheme," added the AFP's Colvin, and the metadata scheme will not allow them to access destination IP addresses without a warrant.'

They want destination IP addresses stored, they want to access with a warrant.

The whole thing is still as clear as mud. Which is what they want it to be.

Commenter

but...

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 7:21PM

Once they have your IP address they can from your ISP provider find everything else.

Commenter

Barney

Date and time

August 09, 2014, 10:42AM

It would be less shifty all around if they could come up with a legal definition of Meta Data

Currently it's an amorphous blob that could be redefined on a whim..

Commenter

ausgnome

Date and time

August 08, 2014, 3:45PM

Absolutely spot on!!!! However, the government had cleverly got is all debating what the definition of metadata is like the good little sheep we are, while they are slowly drip feeding the government oversight on our daily personal business. It may not be too many years away when we'll be required to install video cameras in our homes so we can be listened to and watched for potential "subversive" activity. Don't laugh.

Rather than debating the technical definition of metadata, I suggest we take about 100 steps back and get the government out if our face and quit spying on our every utterance like they do in the US.